Italy’s brutal bastards, Devangelic return with their third album, Ersetu and their first for Willowtip records after departing from Comatose, who released their prior 2 brutal albums.  Devangelic play no frills brutal death metal.  By now you know what you’re getting into with a Devangelic album. 9 songs in an abrupt 31 minutes, but when death metal is played this brutal, this is […]

I vaguely recall interviewing The Black Dahlia Murder, back around the release of 2003s Miasma. Young bright eyed young men, with the world ahead of them, having fun and the metal world at their feet as the darlings of American metal. Well, the faces have changed significantly since then, as guitarist Brian Eschbach and vocalist […]

As I once said (not very long ago!), Tuomas Saukkonen is one goddamn busy dude. To me, Wolfheart’s first two releases, Winterborn and Shadow World, were absolute masterpieces – epic, emotive and creatively diverse albums the breathed new, inspiring life into a subgenre that was abandoned and left for dead, and put them nearly on […]

HM 2 pedals have started to pop up in the unlikeliest of places it seems. From right here in the US/Indiana (Psychomancer), France (Nuisable), Venezuala (Nocturnal Hollow), Russia (Wombripper, Pyre), Greece (Abyssus, Wreckage), Australia (Earth Rot),  Croatia (Herzera) and now Belfast, Northern Ireland of all places by way of Marty Robinson and his one man […]

Within a matter of days, I received 2 really good symphonic black metal albums from the UK, and promptly purchased both. First, Argesk’s heavily Hecate Enthroned influenced  Realm of Eternal Night, and this, the conceptual debut album (they do have 3 EPs under their belt, which I have not heard yet) from Northern Ireland’s Drakonis. With […]

Denmark’s Ferocity really burst onto the scene with their 2009 debut Cocoon of Denial which was an excellent death metal debut album, combining that Danish chunky brand of death metal that fellow countrymen, Dawn of Demise and Corpus Mortale are known for.  The band followed it up with their 2013 album The Sovereign which was more technically advanced and the brutality was increased ten fold.  I love […]

Everyone’s got a list of favorite bands – but when’s the last time you added one to your list? Just happened for me with King Buffalo’s new EP, Dead Star. I’ve been listening to the Rochester, NY space-rock trio for a few years now, after stumbling across their debut album Orion in 2016. Among all […]

Tampa Florida’s Black Death Serpents of Perdition Temple return with their third full length album Sacraments of Descension.  Having been a fan of Gene Palubicki’s work in past Projects like Angel Corpse and Blasphemic Cruelty I was excited to review this.   Palubicki’s riffing is on point throughout this whole album and there is not an […]

It seems inevitable that by the end of every year, we’re all grateful to be moving on to the next one, like the last year was just this stain on your existence you can’t wait to wash out. I certainly know that by the end of 2019, I was ready to dropkick that year into […]

Give In To Despair

I’ve been on a bit of a new-ish British black metal kick of late with the likes of Wolvencrown, Drakonis, Vegard, Ante-Inferno,  Nefarious Dusk, Sleipnir,And Now the Owls Are Smiling, Shadowflag, The Dying Light and the debut from this Manchester based, symphonic black metal act . Of note to British black metal fans is that […]

Azure Emote have been around since 2003.  The debut album Chronicles of an Aging Mammal  was released in 2007 and the follow-up in 2013, The Gravity of Impermanence in 2013.  This band is the brainchild of Mike Hrubovcak and the band continues to incorporate their eclectic and highly original brand of death metal with their […]

Without a doubt one of the most anticipated death metal albums of the year for me, Kansas’s Unmerciful have been an upper echelon brutal technical death metal band.  From the band’s inceptio,n having world class drumming has been a necessary component to the band.  With Unmercifully beaten you had James King. With Ravenous Impulse you […]

Starting 2020  with the same productivity (Myth of I, Aronious, Sutrah) as they ended 2019 (Immanifest, Singularity, Flub, Equipoise, etc) The Artisan Era is quickly rivaling Unique Leader Records when it comes to tech death, even if The Artisan Era seems to have a a little more focus on symphonics. However, there may be some […]

You know that kinda goofy friend you had in high school or college? They weren’t necessarily your BEST friend, but they were always a good time to be around, fun to have a drink with every once in a while and shoot the shit with? But time passes, lives grow apart, and one day you […]

When one who is familiar with the label sits down with a Unique Leader release, there are a few items which come to mind. Firstly, this is going to likely be technical death metal. There will be fantastic musicianship on display. Frequently, the production will also be brick walled, and it may be difficult to […]

I reviewed Baltimore’s brutal death metal band, Visceral Disgorge’s sophomore album, Slithering Evisceration, recently and stated how much I loved the album and how they are one of my favorite brutal death metal bands.  I interviewed singer Travis Werner some years back and I was and still am a tremendous fan of their 2011 debut […]

Germany’s FDA Records has stepped out of their comfort zone for a couple of their early 2020 releases. One is weird goth doom (Hraun), another, Stråle , is a Finnish melodic hard rock band , and the other this one, originates from Japan, the first release on the label from there after a pretty consistently German/European […]

Ante-Inferno is a new black metal act hailing from the moors of Yorkshire, England, and has former and current members of other UK black metal acts like Petrichor and Sathamel. But don’t go expecting a band like either of those bands or like other recent UK black metal like the symphonic Argesk or Darkthrone worshiping […]

Unless you’ve somehow stumbled upon our site looking for affordable dentistry, then you have likely heard of Death. The band, that is. As someone with a Leprosy tattoo, one could say I hold the band in high esteem. I’m sure many other metalheads agree. The reason I even mention the name is because of Morbus […]

When the UK’s  Sylosis released the single “I Sever” at the end of 2019, followed shortly by an official album announcement, I was torn. On the one hand, the song is fantastic – thrashy, epic, and heavy. On the other hand, these are all terms I’d use to describe most Sylosis songs. “I Sever” seemed to be […]

It’s funny how life is with its odd and overall meaningless coincidences. Just recently, I reviewed Unhumanized, the latest release from Cianide, and in that review I had made the reference, for the unfamiliar, of imagining Bob Bagchus (Asphyx, Soulburn, Grand Supreme Blood Court), John McEntee (Incantation, Funerus), and Paul Speckmann (Master) coming together in […]

I, like I’m sure many of you reading this, LOVE beer. I brew my own beer. I love visiting new breweries and talking with brewers about their craft. I’m all for brewers trying new techniques and experimenting with different ingredients. That being said, it’s also very easy for brewers to just go too fucking far. […]

To this day I still own and play Ohio’s Regurgitation’s demo Conceived Through Vomit from 1996.  Brutally heavy and vicious.  One of the band members gave to me when I was fronting Internal Bleeding and we played in Ohio so many damn times-that’s why the people and scene are so near and dear to me.  […]

Tapping into an intriguing mix of tech death and slam, Wormhole aim to expand upon the impressive groundwork laid on their 2016 debut, Genesis, a recent discovery of mine after initially overlooking the album. Some line-up tweaks failed to dull the impact of Wormhole’s cutting edge brand of technical sophistication meets guttural slam approach, and […]